A plea to all Wedding Photographers

In our line of work, I receive quite a number of emails/calls that go like this:

“I hope you can help us. We got married in

[insert month/year/place here] and our photos are really bad. They are not even close to what we were expecting from a candid photographer. They’re [insert flaw here – blurry/dark/way too many/etc]. How much does it cost for you to fix them?” “Can you just do album for us ?”

Often these emails go on to say “We’ve tried to contact our photographer but she / he either doesn’t have the skill set to understand what we want” ”We have around 4000 plus photos she / he asked us to select from the raw dump to edit, we just don’t know which one is better”

Very often I can’t help these request, and my heart bleeds for them.

So I’m putting out a general plea to all wedding photographers, everywhere. For the love of God, don’t start shooting weddings until you’re completely sure you DON’T SUCK.

As a Second shooter, for sure. But as the main shooter? That’s incredibly massive responsibility.Wedding is one time occasion and those two people’s happiness literally rests in your hands. If you can’t, as a bare minimum, hit focus most of the time, or a have backup plan / camera / lens and with competently clean-process the images / video afterwards, you are NOT READY. Do find opportunities to practice and learn and improve until you are.

Thank you.

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General Note:

Too often on photography website / groups I see this issue comes down into “They get what they pay for” debate. Statements such as “People shouldn’t choose the cheapest photographer”, or the old saying “Pay peanuts, get monkeys”.

This boils my blood. I have no patience for victim bashing.

This is about the responsibility of a wedding photographer / photographers offering a service. If I get food poisoning eating at fast food centre, nobody except a moron would say it’s my fault for not eating at a expensive restaurant. Just as each restaurant has certain standards, even the cheapest establishments can also be good. As a photographer how much ever you charge for your services, the please maintain the minimum standards. End of story.